I particularly hate when someone does things like (1)<p><pre><code> <a href="navigateToFoo()">
</code></pre>
when it should be<p><pre><code> <a href="foo.htm">
</code></pre>
so I can't middle click it or Ctrl-click it to open in a new tab. Even worse if there's (2)<p><pre><code> href="#"
</code></pre>
added, which upon middle click will happily load the page I'm currently on inside the new tab.<p>I have an extension in Firefox which changes the mouse cursor for (1) from pointer (hand), so I can easily distinguish that case, I hope this became a W3C standard somehow (though the standard way for executing JS are buttons, not anchors, so probably it won't ever become standardized).
> There can be a whole list of languages in the Accept-Language header, in the order the user prefers them! Use that data, it's there for you to use.<p>Yet it takes only jumping a plane for a few hours to get Google to think I can and want to read Georgian. Google's i18n for anonymous users (I'm not logged in on my phone's browser) is the most ridiculous I've experienced, every border I cross I get a different language.
I'm really annoyed by those sites that insist on having a non-removable top bar overlaying the text. Because they break the page-down key. You page down, but part of the unread text scoots under the top bar. Arrrg.
Here's one he missed: your "country" dropdown has a list of every country in existence, alphabetically. So for the US you have to scroll down to near the end of the list past hundreds of other countries.<p>Instead, put your audience up top (Canada, US, GB maybe) and then alphabetically list the rest.
Asking for city, state and zip code is my favorite on the list. Plus the country should be asked for first then if US only get the street and zip code.<p>There was a link on HN sometime ago that showed that people trusted the form/page more when complete address information was requested (I believe the conclusion was that people were used to doing it that way) so maybe there is a downside to the shorter version.
godamn credit card forms! those get me the most because we're at the moment where i'm trying to give you money, and they pull some passive-aggressive bullshit like limiting the field length to 16 characters.<p>i can <i>almost</i> type in my whole card number, but then i can go no further and i have to manually go back and remove all the spaces and then go to the end of the number and enter the last digit. class act.
> <input type="radio" name="fruit" id="banana" /><label for="banana">Banana</label><p>Slightly pedantic, but it's even easier than that if you don't have any elements separating them - you don't even need the id:<p>> <label><input type="radio" name="fruit" /> Banana</label><p>This adds convenience on desktop, but it's really annoying not to have it on smaller mobile screens.
Accept-Language header is not reliable esp for non-English speaking countries. Many computers/browsers are by default EN, esp if the O/S doesn't support local language.<p>For example, Indonesians speak and read Bahasa all the time, but most browsers there report EN.
WRT language selection and availability, I developed a small Rack gem `i18n_best_langs` that could be useful to web devs.<p><a href="https://github.com/gioele/rack-i18n_best_langs" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/gioele/rack-i18n_best_langs</a><p>It picks up clues from various HTTP pieces (headers, URI) and generates a list of locales in order of possible user preference. It is then up to the web application to make good use of this list of preferences.<p>It is alpha quality but I would love some criticism about it from HN readers.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's anal about redirecting to the canonical host name. Now, let the bike-shedding begin: should the canonical host name be www.foo.com or foo.com?
At the end of the day, it's never about what we <i>can</i> do, it's what we can do within the budget and time that we think is appropriate for what we want to do.
One more thing that's been getting a lot of traction recently is CSS transitions. Some devs are using them for hell everything, because they can. When it's too much of it, it feels like old shiny GIFs whenever you change the zoom level of the text.<p>I've saved in bookmarks one page that made my eyes bleed due to it, but I don't have access to it right now. Stay tuned, I'll post it on Monday :)
I specially agree with the "Download the app now" messages. I hate those because I know how to look those up if I really want to, so just let me get to what I came to this site for.
I don't mind the flags thing, yes I sometimes roll my eyes when I have to hit the stars and stripes for "english", but I can spot it or a union jack out of a set of flag pictures faster than I can find the word "english".<p>You also have the case of foreign users on public computers who may be unable to fiddle with the language settings.
User are afraid to set any browser setting. It would be better for them to choose the language through web page.<p>You should also consider user may not be able to switch the language of a public computer. The setting may be locked, or the operating system is in another language, e.g. Chinese, user doesn't even know where the "setting" button is.
I didn't see it listed so far, but checkout forms that require you to select the type of credit card you have. Since the card (Mastercard, Visa, Discover, AMEX) can be determined by the first digit.<p>I don't see too many sites that require something like this anymore, but every now and then one pops up.
I absolutely hate it when I'm paying with Paypal and you make me enter my shipping address. It's not only a waste of time, but if I have to type in something over and over for every order, it's much more likely I'll make a mistake than if I only have to do it once through the Paypal site.
You can also address multiple languages with hreflang: <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.hk/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html" rel="nofollow">http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.hk/2013/04/x-default-...</a>.
So true. It's frustrating to see people spend hundreds of hours to advance some "fringe" web technologies that don't really affect much in the end, while stuff that we use every day, everywhere continues to have the same (solvable) issues year after year.
Regarding the title of his article, as a someone who routinely uses TCP/IP for tasks other than transmitting HTML, I find his concept of "internet" to be rather myopic.